Monday, October 30, 2017

First Interstellar Object Spotted in Our Solar System

For
the first time ever, a visitor from interstellar space has been spotted
in our solar system. The object, labelled as A/2017 U1, was detected
last week by researchers using the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope in Hawaii. The
researchers reached this preliminary conclusion based on A/2017 U1's
hyperbolic orbit. The path of this object is taking the body out of the
solar system. Although other hyperbolic objects have been spotted
before, these were nudged onto their escape trajectories by
gravitational interactions with planets. Based on current data, A/2017
U1 has had no such close encounters. "We have been waiting for this
day for decades," Paul Chodas, manager of
the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at the NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement. "It's long been
theorized that such objects exist — asteroids or comets
moving around between the stars and occasionally passing through our
solar system — but this is the first such detection." It is
currently unclear what exactly this thing is. When A/2017 U1 was
initially spotted, it was thought to be a comet. However further
observations have revealed no evidence of a coma - the fuzzy cloud of
gas and dust surrounding a comet's core - so the object's name has been
amended to its current asteroidal designation (A/2017)
Read more about this fascinating story at: https://www.space.com/38580-interstellar-object-spotted-comet-asteroid-mystery.html

Article Compiled By: Kyle Tam

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